The past two weeks, I have been residing in a hotel in a little town called Hounslow, England. It is about 35 minutes from central London by tube. The station is just a brisk walk down Lampton Road. All the regular ammenities are present... Free internet access, tea bags, tiny soaps, housekeeping, and yet something is missing. I have grown accustomed to coming in at night, hopping on the computer very conveniently located by the door and elevator, and checking my email to connect with the people I love before going to sleep, or, Heaven forbid, watching awful British television. I relish the idea of taking the sign off the door when I leave only to come home to a freshly made bed and new tiny soaps. The proximity to the tube station is enviable.
Once in London, the sights are numerous. Victoria Tower, which houses the famous bell, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, numerous parks of incredible beauty, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, and a great many others. There are innumerable things to do. Hundreds upon hundreds of places to eat, see a show, shop, dance, drink, rest, sit, stand, and do whatever you could care to do.
The weather is variable, as we have seen. One day it is frigid and you need multiple layers of clothing as well as a coat, scarf, hat, gloves, and whatever else you can get your mittened hands on. A few days later, it may decide to rain. Yesterday it was foggy and muggy and very warm. By very warm, I mean about 60 degrees. In the sun. Apparently, this is the London heatwave. Today it was actually warm enough to bask in the sun in St. James' Park in short sleeves without a coat. But the traditional London weather is usually prevailing-- Cold, wet, and dark.
Traffic only seems intense until you spend an hour standing up with your shopping bags and your coat, crammed into a steel tube with fifty other people. Driving from Point A to Point B seems to take forever until you have to walk everywhere you go with all of your daily belongings.
Yet with all of the things to see, all of the things to do, greener than green parks, bluer than blue skies (when the sun comes out), and everything else, I cannot wait to leave this lovely place and go back to my home.
My home, where the sun only stops shining to rain for days on end, the summer heat is unbearable and the slightest winter chill seems to freeze over the streets, there is a gas station on every corner and a drugstore on every other, the absence of a Wal-Mart seems strange, coffee is black and tea is iced, and Mexican food is a staple of every white man's diet.
My home, where the people I love go on living without me. You know the saying, "You never know what you've got till it's gone?" I didn't realize how much of a homebody I was until I left. I miss the people back home more than words can say. I want to see my mother, father, brother, sister, cats, my swing dancing friend family, my church family, the kids at the school I work at, my theatre friends, the kids I used to babysit, the people I work with. I want to go dancing every night, watch a movie with my sister, argue with my brother about his Lord of the Rings obsession, play piano again, spend a couple hours with my dad doing nothing in particular, talk to my mom who is on the computer while I wash my face in the next room. I want to wake up and go to my jobs and work hard at what I do. I miss the feeling of being productive. I want to do the things I say I'll do, and do my laundry my anal way, and sleep next to my cats, and tell Beethoven and God my deepest longings in the comfort of my bed in the comfort of my room in the comfort of my house. I don't want to take advantage of the things I have been given without giving in return.
What use is my life if I only do what I feel like doing at the moment, when I have the capability and capacity and truly, the desire to do more? I have been blessed beyond measure, and I have squandered it. I have thrown my gifts back in the faces of all who gave. I have refused to do the most important things I could be asked to do: to love. Love God, love people... I am to love all, even those I want nothing more than to place all of my anger onto and to hate vehemently for the rest of eternity. I am to love those who have done nothing to deserve it. I should be acting like a servant, not like I am worthy to be served. I am not. It is as simple as that.
I don't know how this spun off of my story about living in a little place called the Days Hotel, but somehow it is all related. In two weeks I have learned more about my selfish desires and how I treat my life like I am entitled to complain when things do not go my way, even when it is for the best.
After four months, I finally sat down today and finished reading a little book entitled, "Silas Marner." Every once in a while, a book will come along that will change your life, and I think this is one of those. There is a passage in it that goes a little something like this:
"I can't be anyways better nor Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I don't know on; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' things I don't know on, for it's little as I know—that it is. ...Isn't there Them as was at the making on us, and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it. ...And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner—to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know."
I read that little paragraph at least five times before I really understood it. And now I understand part what the Lord has been trying and trying to show me for all the years I've been living. That I cannot understand. I just have to trust Him. He knows better and has a better will.
Home is where the heart is. And so my home is wherever my Lord is, as my heart is with Him.
Love,
Amelia
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